AI put "synthetic quotes" in his book. But this author wants to keep using it.

Rosenbaum used AI tools during his writing process, he told me, “to surface ideas, locate articles, summarize themes, identify people or papers I might want to look into.” He draws a hard line between this kind of research and the “actual reporting, narrative structure, interviews, arguments, and conclusions in the book,” which he says are “entirely mine… There was never a time when AI was writing the book.” In addition to chapters based on transcribed interviews that Rosenbaum says he conducted himself, The Future of Truth also includes more research-based chapters in which Rosenbaum said, “We’re pulling facts and then knitting them together into a narrative.” Tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude were used heavily to gather information, he said, with any nuggets mined by those tools tagged with a “this came from AI” warning in his notes. The irony of an author incorporating AI-generated falsehoods into a book on AI’s reality-skewing effects is not lost on Rosenbaum. “I appreciate the book getting some attention, but this would not have been my choice about how to get it,” he said. While that irony is “uncomfortable,” he’s quick to spin it as “also instructive. The fact that someone writing critically about AI and verification could still encounter these failures tells you how pervasive and persuasive these systems have become.” Rosenbaum’s own issue with AI “demonstrates the problem more vividly than any abstract argument could,” he said. Perhaps. But if we accept this take, every avoidably obvious mess in the world might be a disguised good because it really helps illuminate the huge mistake. And that can’t be right; sometimes “negligence” is just that. When asked directly how he could succumb to some of the AI-related problems his own book warns about, Rosenbaum described what sounds like a dysfunctional relationship with a charming charlatan. “It leaves you… uncomfortable almost any time you’re using it,” he said of its tendency to ignore clear instructions. “I’ve never fought with tech before this, honestly,” he said at another point. “And I use it extensively.”